Scar Tissue
by Lexie Jayne
Summary: She traces her scars and remembers pain it’s part of human nature to collect things, hoard items, memories and feelings that bring them some sort of happiness or joy. Jondy.


**Title:** Scar Tissue

**Author:** Lexie Jayne

**Rating:** M

**Fic Variations**** Prompt/Claim:** Slipping / Jondy X5-210

**Spoilers:** Dark Angel Seasons 1-2

**Warnings:** Disturbing imagery, I guess.

**Words:** 1 268

**Count:** 1/5

**Summary: **She traces her scars and remembers pain; it's part of human nature to collect things, hoard items, memories and feelings that  
bring them some sort of happiness or joy.

**Author's Notes:** I loved this prompt. I love bring less-than-stable characters out to play. I sort of jumped in with both feet. Just a one sort to get back into fic-writing after a six week hiatus.

* * *

It's part of human nature to collect things, hoard items, memories and feelings that bring them some sort of happiness or joy. They might not be quite human, but they still tend to amass things in the same manner.

Syl and Krit stockpile weapons like they're going out of style, everything from back alley gun purchases to antiques that have gathered dust and grime and been long forgotten about in second-hand stores. They can both rattle off production dates, bullet types and faults in each weapon, plus historical references of the older ones. It seems fitting for their childhood.

Zane covets pre-Pulse CDs. He likes the Indie music, the so-called emo music of dull eyed teenagers and too many issues. He says it's the best music to get high too, but she doesn't know how he knows that, because she lived with him for four years, and Zane's always been very anti-drugs.

But Zane loves the music for it's statement, it's vision into the past. His rock music is stacked next to 'Best of…' pop collections and soundtracks to animated films. In his music, he collects tiny pieces of other people, another life, another world. It brings a smile to his face and a bounce into his step, and Jondy finds herself digging through stores trying to find music he doesn't have.

Brin creates her own collection – she makes jewelry. She buys jewelry just to rip it apart and make new stuff. Her hands are always weaving, beading, clipping and twisting something new.

She sits on the couch and looks at the jars lining the window – beads, organized by size and shape – pink, turquoise, purple so dark they look black, baby yellow, and silver. There are bowls of buttons and sequins, chains and pins everywhere, and when she goes to leave, Brin presses a necklace into her hand. Gold and turquoise, with delicate butterfly charms and shiny glass beads, when she wears it, it feels half like shackles and half like a kind of rosary.

Jondy collects injuries. She towers over her sisters, tall and skinny, awkward. She likes to pull her legs up, tuck herself into the smallest amount of space she can. She's clumsier, always tripping or falling or getting cut.

There's the faint line from her right temple to her ear – a car accident, the windshield smashed over her. There are far thicker, whiter burn scars on her left wrist, but she was having some problems them, and she can forgiven herself almost anything. A spidery white scar over her left eyelid that no one can remember how she got and that she hates with a fiery passion. She wonders if she should get a spider web tattoo over it, just to obscure it, but doesn't.

There's the tiny white scars just above her knee, from where she smashed a glass bottle in temper.

She forgives herself for all those scars, little imperfections in her physical and mental state. Whether a deep abyss of depression that lends itself a cigarette lighter so she can watch blisters bubble on her wrists, or she gets so angry and frustrated, she slams a bottle on her leg or just something that she might have been born with, a sign of her future, she can forgive herself, bundling her hurt and pain and annoyance into a tiny ball in the back of her mind.

The one she never forgives is the one on her leg, the proverbial Mark of Kane. It was not her fault, and she will never forgive it. Ben lies next to her and apologizes, rubbing the soft scar tissue as if her forgiveness can be offered in soft whispers.

He pushed her. They were training – Capture the Flag – and the back of the forest at Manticore had a ledge. They could walk around the ledge or climb down, grasping tree branches and vines in their haste to scramble down. The bottom was a mess of rocks and dirt, and thorny weeds holding court. Sol was down there, guarding the flag, and she was above, with Zane and Ben, looking over the ledge, trying to find the other side's defense to work out which was the best way to go about retrieving the flag.

"Eva's in the tree, Max is on the group and that's Jack in the north-east corner," she breathed, eyeing the fluttering red flag tied to a sapling.

"Plus Sol, and I heard Brin mention backup. There's at least six down there," Zane reached for his radio.

"We need a distraction to get down there fast," Ben had mused. "We need to scale that wall in under a minute."

"Jondy and I can distract them, you get down there," Zane ordered, standing up. Ben glared at him. "You're the fastest, Ben. Just get down there."

Ben wouldn't disagree with Zane, who was his superior. It was easier to nod, and when Zane moved to leave, he pushed her. It wasn't clumsiness or an accident. He turned to Jondy and pushed her off the ledge – a ninety meter drop, with a gun dragging her down. Hands scrambled for a purchase on something, but branches and vines broke away, and dirt rained down after her - no control over the descent.

She hit the ground like a sack of concrete, and something akin to the shriek of a dying animal echoed through the forest. Her face was white under all the dirt, the gun slung across her chest, already shaking.

"Jondy, Jondy." It was Eva who was by her side, tossing the weapon away, trying to untangle her from the gun. Another cry of pain and then silence.

"Max, go and get Zack." The order was shouted out, and murmurs at the sight of the bone piercing through flesh was enough to make some of her brothers and sisters turn away.

"You're so clumsy, Jondy." Ben stood over her with an easy grin, but a dark look in his eyes.

She remembers clinging to both of Eva's hands and let reality crumple from view.

Now, the scar is six inches long, down past her knee, and at least an inch wide, starting just after her knee. A weak spot that aches on wet days, and the way to take her out, swiftly, no matter how many times they tried to mend it properly. The others had scars that healed swiftly and cleanly, but she collected them, sacred lines that told her stories, tell of pain and suffering and things that are never quite right. The punishment from an unstable brother was her warning about her future, was a warning about his fate.

She muses on her collection at night, when the sky is clear. She traces her scars and remembers pain – of flesh slicing open, bubbling, blistering and melting, of cold but warm bone lying against her flesh, her blood spilling onto leaves and dirt. She recalls broken ribs and terrors that try to crawl up her throat and escape, of wanting to tell about suffering but only being able to show it by hurting herself in the process.

She collects and savors pain, something ordinary people try to discard. She holds it close to remind her that pain is a feeling and it doesn't matter how low she gets, she still feels everything. Humanity might be slipping past her too fast to catch because her pain isn't the sort people want to hold tight to, but at least she collects something.


End file.
